After 288 Days And 4623 Orbits Of Earth, Astronaut Peggy Whitson Returns To Earth

Ms Whitson is completing a 288-day mission that began in November 2016,
spanning 122.2 million miles and 4,623 orbits of Earth - her third
long-duration stay on the outpost.

Peggy Whitson will have accrued a total of 665 days in space over the course of her career

Washington:
Record-breaking NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson
is set to depart the International Space Station (ISS) and return to
Earth after completing a 288-day long mission, the US space agency said.

Ms
Whitson, along with fellow Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Jack Fischer
of NASA and Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency
Roscosmos will undock their Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft from the space
station and land in Kazakhstan at 9:22 pm EDT.

On Friday, Mr Yurchikhin will hand over station command to NASA's Randy Bresnik.

Ms
Whitson is completing a 288-day mission that began in November 2016,
spanning 122.2 million miles and 4,623 orbits of Earth - her third
long-duration stay on the outpost.

At the time of their landing,
she will have accrued a total of 665 days in space over the course of
her career, more than any American astronaut, placing her eighth on the
alltime space endurance list.

Mr Yurchikhin and Mr Fischer, who launched in April, will complete 136 days in space.

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Mr
Yurchikhin will return to Earth with a total of 673 days in space on
his five flights, putting him in seventh place on the all-time endurance
list.

As
a result of the impacts of Hurricane Harvey, NASA is reviewing return
plans to Houston of Ms Whitson, Mr Fischer and the science samples
landing in the Soyuz spacecraft.

The crew will participate in standard post-flight medical evaluations.

While
living and working aboard the space station, the Expedition 52 crew
pursued hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical
science and Earth science aboard humanity's only orbiting laboratory,
NASA said.

At the time of undocking, Expedition 53 will begin aboard the station under the command of Randy Bresnik.

Along
with his crewmates Sergey Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos and Paolo Nespoli of
ESA (European Space Agency), the threeperson crew will operate the
station until the arrival of three new crew members.

Mark Vande
Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA and Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos, are
scheduled to launch on September 12 from Kazakhstan.